The secrets of the mind convene splendidly,Though the mind is meek.To be aware inwardlyof brain and beautyIs dark too recognizable.Thought looking out on thoughtMakes one an eye:Which it shall be, both decide.One is with the mind alone,The other is with other thoughts goneTo be seen from afar and not known.

When openly these inmost sightsFlash and speak fully,Each head at home shakes hopelesslyOf being never ready to see selfAnd sees a universe too soon.The immense surmise swims round and roundAnd heads grow wiseWith their own bigness beatifiedIn cosmos, and the idiot sizeOf skulls spells Nature on the ground,While ears listening the wrong way reportEchoes first and hear words before soundsBecause the mind, being quiet, seems late.By ears words are copied into books,By letters minds are taught self-ignorance.From mouths spring forth vocabulariesTo the assemblage of strange objectsGrown foreign to the faithful countrysideOf one king, poverty,Of one line, humbleness.Unavowed and false horizons claim prideFor spaces in the headThe native head sees outside.The flood of wonder rushing from the eyesReturns lesson by lesson.The mind, shrunken of time,Overflows too soon.The complete vision is the sameAs when the world-wideness beganWorlds to describeThe excessiveness of man.

But man's right portion rejectsThe surplus in the whole.This much, made secret first,Now makesThe knowable, which wasThought's previous flesh,And gives instruction of substance to its intelligenceAs far as flesh itself,As bodies upon themselves to whereUnderstanding is the headAnd the identity of breath and breathing are establishedAnd the voice opening to cry: I know,Closes around the entire declarationWith this evidence of immortalityâ€”The total silence to say:I am dead.

For death is all ugly, all lovely,Forbids mysteries to makeScience of splendor, or any separate disclosingOf beauty to the mind out of body's bookThat page by page flutters a world in fragments,Permits no scribbling in of moreWhere spaces are,Only to look.

Body as Body lies more than still.The rest seems nothing and nothing isIf nothing need be.But if need be,Thought not divided anywayAnswers itself, thinkingAll open and everything.Dead is the mind that parted each head.But now the secrets of the mind conveneWithout pride, without painTo any onlookers.What they ordain aloneCannot be knownThe ordinary way of eyes and earsBut only prophesiedIf an unnatural mind, refusing to divide,Dies immediatelyOf too plain beautyForeseen within too suddenly,And lips break open of astonishmentUpon the living mouth and rehearseDeath, that seems a simple verseAnd, of all ways to know,Dead or alive, easiest.